The Purge, Election Year - 2016 - Movie

The Purge - Election Year

2016 

R - 127 min

Thrill ride for socialist adrenaline freaks, definitely not serious filmmaking.

From the previews so carefully edited to grab you and not let go, and buildup via the other 2 films of this trilogy, I was expecting something a bit more….overwhelming as far as scope.  Something along the lines of different locations across the states, interconnected webs of intrigue from those in power with ties to other countries, or quite possibly more of the inner social circles of those of the NFFA, the New Founding Fathers of America.  Instead, this was once again battle lines drawn between tightly controlled areas, characters, and personal focused drama on a limited scale that I would estimate demonstrated a smaller budget, studio execs not wanting to pour money into the incendiary series for fear of controversy or backlash, or quite possibly a look at the demographics of the previous 2 films and deciding it would not be worth it.  Only adrenaline junkies go see this stuff after all, in large part.

Contrary to that, however, we know that focusing on a particular group of people and subject in a story that has a large scope is one of the ways to effectively demonstrate the crux of the matter without making an epic that could end up being another Water World.  The hard part then is believability and impact. Convincing performances by all, and great editing tension and continual moving action kept this alive and made it the “thrill thing” that people go see most killer and chiller film, splatter films, or other pump-action flicks for.  This is really no different when it comes to that, as expected.

As far as bad guys, and girls, that was also limited, but well-played and came down to inept mercenaries working for the big guys with money, and some bad girls in the street who just wanted their candy bars.  Rather colorful group.

So getting past the cinema aspects and looking at the agenda, there is the socialist/moralist/idealist triangle of big private government interest taking advantage of their situation and providing a platform for extinguishing poor people that do nothing but suck resources from the economy, and also getting their kicks in a near-satanic kind of way by personally purging themselves in a private ceremony.  Conspiracy isn’t quite the word any longer at this stage, it’s more like outright legalized plans by white supremacists to rid themselves of social “vermin”.  Of course, to not make it seem like a white/black issue, the first person they sacrifice is a white drug addict.

The troubling aspect of this is the filmmaker’s almost overeager willingness to make this a vendetta against Christ.  No, I don’t mean Christianity, as in the church, but Christ himself (and consequently the images and hierarchy of church authority as well).  The name of Jesus was put front and center as the “excuse” that these twisted conspirators and control freaks used to justify their genocidal/sociopathic plan.  The church and state duo that is so often decried as an incorrect alliance by left swinging idealist and ACLU fans is seen firmly rooted here as the core of the NFFA’s justification, just as Christ and the Church have been used countless times as axe-swinging material over issues like slavery.  There was of course the underground group, mostly African American that included the token white guy who is our hero of the film, starring Frank Grillo, who come to the rescue in the end, and save the senator.  I’m not afraid of a spoiler here, because those of you who would actually bother to go see this will guess this is going to happen anyway.

Predictable, plot driven, and juvenile, the entire series is based on the old fashioned horror convention of “who’s gonna get whacked, and how bad, and do we get to watch?”.  

I repeat: Thrill ride for socialist adrenaline freaks, definitely not serious filmmaking.  HOWEVER, having said that, I’m betting that privately Mr. Obama and cabinet members got a screening, and enjoyed every gun-hating minute.

- Agitatus

Maggie's Plan - my Part II

Maggie's Plan  - Part 2

2015

R - 1Hr 38Min - Comedy, Drama, Romance

Greta Gerwig - Maggie 

Julianne Moore - Georgette

Ethan Hawke - John

Make sure you read the FIRST review of this, which was yesterday, the day before today, ya dig?
___________________
As with all things that seem pristine and pressed together neatly, after sleeping on it, the next day you’re sure to find wrinkles.  You plant grass seed and you find a patch you missed when it all grows up or the birds ate while you were away.  You turn the perfect tomato over on the vine to find a hornworm firmly embedded in the fruit’s shady underside.

After sleeping over the Maggie’s Plan initial review, I’ll have to say something troubled me while I slept that I woke up thinking about.  It was something clear to me during the viewing, but not as consciously clear as the flicker of the celluloid (or dancing digits) on screen.  This is not to negate ANY of my previous comments actually, because it’s a different subject, offbeat from the filmic language of actor, writing, directing, lighting.  This is a touchy subject nowadays for most of the urban and intelligent, as well as a mundane or mute subject across much of the rest of the culture.  So while stepping carefully to not offend, this topic must be explored, after all, it is central to the central character, therefore it’s central to the entire piece and affects the whole zeitgeist of the thing, if you get me.

Maggie’s Quaker life. 

Late in the film, Julianne Moore’s Georgette character sums her up while seated across the table from her as “simple, a little stupid, loving, kind, open hearted, warm” (not an exact quote, I’ve only seen this once) and then went on to say “I really like you”.  She summed up our filmic understanding of the Maggie character to the core.  We absolutely love her, you can’t help it.  The natural charm, the very honest approach, the wide eyes, her love for children.  But ultimately we’re also led to what could conceivably be a darker part of her, her double-minded hypocrisy, she’s called a hypocrite outright by her friend, and manipulator, or intruder into the lives of others, which she did so very unproductively throughout, admitting in the end her plan was a fiasco and ill-taken, ill-conceived.  Yet we also believe it was naturally inevitable, just like the ending (no spoiler here right?).  

But her faith plays a key role, a master manipulative role that hangs on her like a necklace.  The key shot in the film surrounding her faith, we find, is empty.  (Ok this is a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen this yet PLEASE DO NOT read further).  She attends a Quaker service.  We see a simple sign that is like a parking sign, so we can assume that it has been there for some time, or at least people don’t make signs out of metal and bolt them to an iron fence unless they intend to do something long-term.  The very next shot is so telling of the state of her faith, and the state of the Quaker religion.  It’s the alter of her inner sanctuary.  She sits alone at the meeting, not one other soul in attendance. She has stated to John about her meetings, “I still attend”.  However we only find out late in the game of the story that her faith has an empty, silent component.  Because her faith is directly tied to her behavior, and her behavior is that of idealistic dreaming that leads her down blind alleys, then her faith and the admission of mistaken values become one in the same, or part of the failure.  Her faith becomes nullified in the face of another kind of idealism, being urban, modernist, and ultimately religionless.  She resolves to break away with that life of manipulation, hence her assumed dreamy idealism, therefore we assume that the religious adherence must pass away with it, or that it did.

Her skittishness of things involving her body, her purity, is essentially viewed as tied with this as well.  She refuses the offer of physical love from her sperm donor, attempting to have a child by herself.  In the person of Guy, played by Travis Fimmel, is a perfectly fine specimen of a man offering love and affection that she seems to so obviously need and want, but she wants the fruit of his labor in a plastic jar, one that she emphasizes is “sterile”.  She had to say that of course.  His offer is truly sweet, given the circumstances, and understandable.   She claims, “That’s too complicated”.  This also strengthens the character’s puritanical prudishness and distance from romance and the evident opportunities right before her, reinforcing what appears to be a wayward idealism once again.  Sexual fear is yet another symptom of a wayward religion.

It’s typical of the modern idealist in the new age of abstracting reality from circumstances, of situational ethics and tolerance, buzz words for universalistic correctness, speech sounding like sound blurbs from a newscast carefully censored prior to air time, to dismiss religion along with “old fashioned” words like purity and faithfulness by dragging a wonderfully innocent character like Maggie (an old fashioned name as well), through the sullies and mud pits of the sophisticated and existential modern conventions of parenthood.  In the end, what we have is essentially a soiled virgin whose misguided beliefs are found to be subjugated to the supposedly more elevated personal triumph of “the real world”.  It’s all done comically, and with great cinematic penache, but also there is this sense of tragedy, at least for me there was that sense, a sense of loss of something larger and more beatific than the immediate and pragmatic, an overreaching sense of guidance, of God.  I believe that this is a universal desire, a reality.  Beneath our sometimes stoic standup against darkness there is a prayerful wish for Eden to be true, that we could return to the garden, but alas we are awash in those muddy sullies.

For that reason I’m sure that Rebecca Miller did not attempt to dream up a way to undermine belief, but one cannot separate the wayward or misguided idealism from belief in Maggie’s character, they are one in the same.  In the end, we are left to believe that the character has undergone a great change, or shift, and has come to realize that like her Quaker meetings, her belief in a world that is pure and unadulterated is also empty, and cannot exist.  That I suppose, is the sense of loss that I have, while also triumphing in the belief that she does eventually find the direction that she truly was looking for in the first place.

In place of that vacuum, Rebecca gives us a hope that if we look directly and squarely at ourselves, as we are, not as we would “like” to be, we can find the substantial and fulfilling life, despite it’s flaws.  This does not negate God, but simply puts our condition in a real perspective, an honest one, one that can accept a giant jar of pickles.

- Agitatus

Maggie's Plan - 2015 - Movie

Maggie's Plan 

2015

R - 1Hr 38Min - Comedy, Drama, Romance

Refreshing, invigorating, other positive words come to mind.  This is a SitCom. I hate that word, because it conjures up soap operas, at least in my mind, and wasted hours that people spend on a couch in front of half-hour relational entanglements and personal romantic and suspenseful tensions.  Well, there really should be a new word, a Relational Comedy.  A RelCom.  That’s what this is.

I’ll get to Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, and Ethan Hawke in just a moment, and a shining moment too, but first I want to touch on Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph’s roles.  I’ll call them both unexpectedly and pleasantly surprising.  Children of SNL, after the previews I’d seen, I was set for characters that were colored with that sensitivity of the SNL world, the quick and quirky changelings that you can never really believe in, delighted in yes, but of course were very put on.  As I said, I was surprised.  The directing and acting combination here throws us absolute winners of convincing characters that are also enjoyable.  In the middle of the first few sentences of Maya’s first appearance on the screen she does indeed become the friend character, and SNL is nowhere to be found.  Bill Hader, likewise, shed his Saturday personas, many of them, and spot on delivered a real and serious performance as a friend and dad, not to mention a perfect half-drunk scene were his “slip” was extremely well done and not “faked” at all.  Kudos to them both.  Well done.  They’ve managed to avoid the Jim Carrey syndrome of never being completely believable as anything other than an “over-actor” (quote from Liar Liar outtake).

The complete surprise to me here was Greta Gerwig as Maggie.  I say complete surprise here because ( I am now ashamed to say this because I feel like “where have I been?”) I have not seen her before in her other appearances in Frances Ha, Mistress America, or otherwise.  She has SOooooo many credits already.  Again, where have I been?  I need to see those films when I have time. She absolutely envelopes the screen with her natural and effervescent presence.  It just drips off the camera into the theater.  Her home-spun look and calm resolve play so well.  The scenes with the youngest child are classic beautiful and endearing beyond measure.  I think I could just watch those by themselves over a few more times.  This role seems written for her.  It may have been, I don’t know.   But she is the perfect antithesis to Julianne Moore’s exotic and overwrought character Georgette, with the French accent and ballistic scholarly credentials.  Moore of course pulls this off with ease it seems.  It can also be that Greta’s costumer for this role was spot-on perfect, down to the shoes we see in the opening, the done up hair, or like the one restaurant scene where I laughed at the outfit of the yellow checkered blouse conventionally 50s with the Middletown America turquoise (was it?) sweater.  Perfect, and schoolish, like her apartment piled with books.

In fact I need to pause here and just sum up the whole acting thing from every perspective: Incredible.  Every player in this film gives a stellar performance, and so therefore I must also believe that Rebecca Miler, director, has triumphed.  Talk about understanding the language of film and how to get a performance out of people.  Wow, she’s going to have a great career as a director.  That only goes back to ’95, even though she’s been acting since ’88.  Kudos to her as well for this breakthrough film. That’s what I keep wanting to call it.  Why?  Because I believe we’re in for more of here.  Like Clint Eastwood was at one time turning from acting to directing, Rebecca is just getting warmed up I believe.

Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore.  Now here is a couple of seasoned actors who’s chemistry in this case could not be more perfectly matched with the roles.  The scenes in the snow, the bedroom farces, the antithetical proton/neutron attraction/attack synthesis makes the story and the plot work. The scene of Ethan’s character John coming out of his “closet” in the confessional kind of way to Maggie is absolutely perfect, stunning in fact.  So well written.  So here is where the writer gets the honors.  Great characters written well, and great casting all around.

So far, I believe that this film we should see up next year for an Oscar.  For which nomination I would not be sure, but writing might be my choice.

If you’re in to RelComs, this is a must see.

And one point that I’m proud of, I called the last shot.  I knew exactly where the film would cut at the end.  In fact, there in the theater, I actually held up my fingers and pressed them together at almost the exact same moment the closing shot went to black.  I still have that editing magic I guess.

- Agitatus

4 Films/1 Day

4 Films/1 Day

On Wednesday, July 13th, I plan on seeing all 4 of the following films, a banner day.  Then I'll post my usually pointed and biased opinions for each one the next day.  Should be quite an adventure.  I've never viewed 4 films in one day. Taking them in this order:


Maggie's Plan - The Music of Strangers - The Purge - The Infiltrator

Exposed - 2016 - Movie

Exposed

2016
Ana de Armas,  Keanu Reeves, and Melody London - Editor

This was a surprise, really a surprise.  This is a very mature film, not mature in content as in rating, but mature in filmmaking art form.  There are 2 veins of seemingly disparate stories running parallel here that beautifully resolve to create a lush inside portrait of innocence, betrayal, lust, friendship, and the truthful breaking of "the status quo".   It's bad cop vs. little girl.  I absolutely loved my very first viewing of this film, and that is rare for me.  I want to watch it again.

But it turns out there is a reason for this film being "bifurcated" into two streams.  There was originally a director's vision, which had more to do with Isabel's part of the story, involving mystic beings from beyond, angelic creatures, visions, etc.  And then there is the "real" world that K. Reeves inhabits as a kind of loser cop that is dragging his feet all the time because he's shaking off a dead partner syndrome.  (By the way, why do cop partners always insist on taking on their dead partner's cases even at the peril of their job and badge and when the boss has told them "no"?  Answer: it's cinema, and you would not have a story without it).  Read the IMDB biography of Declan Dale, the supposed director, and you'll understand.

So this is really a film by......Melody London?

It's true that the film seems to drag.  That's by what we would call "normal" standards today.  There is a reason for that.  The relationships need to be developed concretely to make this story work.  Cutting out the length of scenes for the sake of impatient "expediency" would not do it justice, but would bring the overall story to harm by trivializing the importance of the bonds between the "real" world, and the world within Isabel's mind.  I will not elaborate as I risk a spoiler if I do so.

But suffice it to say that the filmmaker....uh, editor..... here has done an excellent and MATURE job of pacing the film, bringing out the fine points of actor interactions, and interweaving the storyline.  In the end it's all a huge payoff.  It works.  Fascinating and great filmmaking.  I give it all my stars, and I haven't viewed it a 2nd time yet, but certainly will.

So it would seem that the so called failed marriage of producers and director in this case possibly led to a really good film.  Hm.  Kind of like "collaboration".  I WOULD however have liked to have seen what the film was supposed to be like from just the director's original intentions.

If I could elaborate a bit on the whole "pacing" thing, the genius of timing in films resides in 2 things: 1. Weather is is appropriate to the subject matter and 2: If it is evenly distributed - consistency.   This film accomplishes both.  You can cut scenes early and quickly and then they are unevenly matched with other similar moments, but the editor here was careful not to succumb to an urge to "speed it up".  Makes the whole thing more believable.  

Blue Like Jazz - 2014 - Movie

Blue Like Jazz 

(the movie)

2014

Steve Taylor directs

Donald Miller writes

IMDB Link

I’m one of those who grew up in the Nazarene church watching every Christianese film ever made in the 60s and 70s.  All of the Billy Graham films, the films about “God’s Preacher” in the streets of NY on skid row - David Wilkerson, and all the teen “scare” flicks about drinking and running with the devil that always ended with some kid dying and the other kid getting saved.  It was very much the same as the small missionary books that we read every week.  They were almost mathematically predictable in their formulaic way of presenting missionaries that struggled with some people group that had not heard about Jesus, the hardship that the missionaries themselves went through to reach these people, and then some breakthrough would happen, and as a resolution something wonderful would come from a tragedy or a seemingly unbreakable barrier.

SCCR is the acronym used by Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz, the movie, for the arc of the story, Setting, Conflict, Climax, Resolution.  When applied neatly in those films and books, it took on a predictability that even a teenager could have written themselves.  But when used artfully, as in this film, Blue Like Jazz, Steve Taylor does a mash-up job of twisting it around so that those characters we think are going to end up dead have another lease on life, and those seemingly alive, make ghostly disappearances into an alternative lifestyle, for awhile at least.

So in other words, “This ain’t yo daddy’s church movie boy!”

I really did love it.  It was funny, poignant, and successfully convincing, all those things that most of those early films and books from the fledgling Christian media age were not.  Yes, this is a Christian story, written by an author that is outspokenly Christian, and directed by a music and media whiz that is the same, but with a new sensitivity to reality, and no fear of truthfulness.  Like the book, Blue Like Jazz turns the tables on the secular world without dismissing the people that are secular, and making the apology for the church that has been so long in coming to our skeptical modernists and post-modernist majority of today.

It really does work well. 

Ok, in antithesis to all that I do have to say that there are juvenile filmmaker marks here and some mistakes, like continuing to run the music soundtrack when it would be better to have it off (like the conversation in the bike hut when the Texan and the blonde main characters are having it out about their viewpoints).  Would have been better to sometimes just turn the “musak” off and have dialogue, because then when music IS on, it’s much more impactful.  Consistent music throughout, especially filler music, is dreadful.  But other than that, this was a really well-made film, and hopefully they will collaborate to make more.  I agree with the 4-star marking on Amazon.  Nice job Steve and Don.

John Michael Talbot - 1989 - Music CD

John Michael Talbot

Master Collection

1989

You know, amid all the crud and degradation of mankind that I find myself reviewing at times, such as the depression of the Bob Dylan film, or the lost Knight in Terrence Malick's latest work, in the sincere hope that people will actually read that and get something from those reviews, I must interject some absolute beauty and hope in other forms.  Enter John Michael Talbot, once again lifting my spirit above what I am currently doing and "busy" with to calm me, bless me, and gently but persuasively lead me into the chambers and halls of endless light and love in the presence of God Almighty.

This CD collection was listened to 7 full times through by my brother Ernie before I brought it home  and put it in my iTunes digitally.  How do I know how many times?  Because fastidious Ernie put a small "tick" mark by his address and the price of the audio LPs and CDs that he purchased.  And I do mean EACH time he listened completely through something.  So that means that Ernie listened to at least 238 John Michael Talbot songs in his life.

I've included the small pic here for your amusement at the expense of my blessedly eldest OCD brother.  Pray for him.

I'm Not There - 2007 - Movie

I'm Not There

2007
IMDB Link

Six different people embody/channel Dylan, the most audacious of which is Cate Blanchett.  Unbelievable performances.  Drama, pathos, humor as well.

But I could not help but be struck by how very sad this story was.  There was melancholy and angst everywhere, sprayed across the screen, from the regrets of a family torn apart, to a dog left behind, a smoking motorcycle against a tree, and a confused public and bewilderment and disappointment with everything.

That about sums up the circus around Bob's work.  A very creative challenge, putting Dylan's biograph to a fictional setting and then lighting it on fire, like the girl lighting her head with a match in one scene as he drives away in a car.  Most excellent use of visual storytelling I've seen in a long while. It's also fitting that it's very much in the style of a 60s dreamscape film, seemingly dislocating, while also running 6 different stories at the same time that result in a cohesive whole.  That's a difficult thing to hold together, or pull together in the first place, and a nightmare for an editor.

But as usual, I'm behind the times in writing a review for this, as it is 9 years old and I'm just getting around to seeing it.

If you're a music fan, and a Dylan ponderer, this is like ice cream on the cake of what we already know. 

Knight of Cups - Lives up to my expectations. Genius.

Knight of Cups

2015

Terrence Malick

In the very start of cinema, you had the rotoscope.  It was the illusion of images flashing by through little slots in a circular metal container, and your eye did not see the little slots at the right speed, but they blurred together, allowing the glimpses of the images on the opposite side of the hollow container to be "glanced" at through them, and since the images were in sequence, that gave the illusion of motion.  It's still the same today, at 24 frames per second, or 30, or 60, depending on the camera.

The very early cinema was a desire to create the illusion of motion.  The material used for the motion images varied from horses to people walking, or throwing a ball.  But from then on, structure began to form, and cinema evolved into storytelling.  The novelty of the simple image quickly grew into an art form not just of the image, but of the meaningful interaction between image and observer.  The most artful became master of the image so that it told the most effective story.  

Malick lived up to my expectation, as noted in my prediction in my Facebook post which I almost never write, in that his masterful use of the image as primary in creating his stories has come to full fruition in Knight of Cups.  He has finally transcended cinema's modern constraints for good, and I don't see him looking back.  

As much as entertainment fans may cringe at the thought, this is what truly great cinema should be.  His work is as close to the dreamlike experience of existential thought as the dream itself.  There is no doubt there is a great deal of direction, manipulation (as difficult as it is to sense that word as positive, it is), and content.  In fact, there is so much more content here packed into it's 2 hours that it could take weeks to unpack it.  

This is such a totally different approach to storytelling that it draws largely bifurcated reactions, packed firmly into 2 camps, one being the "love it" camp all of whom may not be able to explain why they do, but they do, and the bewildered or "hate it" camp, which will no doubt admire the energy and visual beauty of Cups, but will likely eschew the depth of it on the grounds of what appears to be the absence of plot and dialogue.

After just seeing it tonight, I have to say I will need to see it again.  It deserves a second viewing, or repeated viewings.   Those who would downplay the film as possibly pandering to lower visual tastes and appealing to salivating predators needing eye-candy fixes either have not really viewed the film, or are perhaps in that class of moviegoers themselves and not paying attention.  The great juxtapositions that Terrence is making here are a teeter-totter of the conscience, the ocean tides giving a perfect metaphor for the ebb and flow of an embattled soul-searching male in the onslaught of post-modernity, and also the very fact of being a vulnerable male, subject to what every man is subjected to in some degree, sooner or later, without exceptions.  

There is one line in the traditionally Malick hushy-whispery monologues that slip by us often quickly and without seeming connection (although on examination you'll find that they are solidly connected and filled with multiple meanings), and I had to actually get my phone out and note it down before I forgot it exactly as quoted.  It is a line of monologue floating above the scenes of Bale's character Rick interacting with the strip club girl played by Isabel Lucas I believe.  It is the girl's voice:

"We're not living the lives we're meant for......We're meant for something else."

THAT is a load of content that we could talk about all night, and deliciously delivered by the most blatantly audacious of the girls Rick is drawn in by.  That would be Malick's great gift of irony subtly yet also boldly swashed across the screen for our minds to wrap around.  Malick is very much like the court jester here, a goofy character seemingly out of place, but absolutely treasured by the King because the biting wit of a great jester holds great value and substance.

To end the film with the word "Begin" is also just such a play for us.  We are given the many facets of a jewel, and then it's laid before us on the table and the question is asked of us, "What will you do with it"?  The open road speeds towards us as the last image.

To be continued.....

Knight of Cups - 2015 - Movie Pre-Review

Knight of Cups: 2015 Terrence Malick

Initial Pre-Review

This is my Facebook post of Mar. 9th:

I believe that A.A. Doud of the A.V. Club's analysis is very observant and right on in many ways.

https://film.avclub.com/los-angeles-gets-the-terrence-malick-treatment-in-knigh-1798186822

An extensive analysis is exactly the antithesis, however, of what a film like Malick's is really about. The reason he has so broken with stereotype and worked his against-the-odds filmmaking style, and repetitively, is for 2 main reasons (and I'm sure there are more if we look further, but 2 main reasons in any case). 1) Like a great master painter, and I just viewed Pollack a few weeks ago, and that fits this perfectly, to repeat a formula that works and to refine it would be the goal and 2)the style perfectly breaks the expectations we have, yes, and if one allows oneself to be "taken" by the film's direction, which is indeed meditative and dreamlike, then you'll find that the "narrative" is held within that structure - in other words, like a great painting, there is a reason for it being great that is not necessarily borne out of expectation, but a naturalism that makes it great, and it has to be taken as a WHOLE and not pieces, which is why narrative structure indeed cannot be applied here. Like that sentence for instance. Technically it still works, even though there is no stopping place.

Pollack's later works were great precisely because he found a freedom from the restraints of the edge of the canvas, and the edge of the "known" and began to allow his free association to combine with his full acknowledgement of his craft.  As it applies to Malick, in The New World for instance, there is a definite progression of plot, as we know the story to have it's own plot in any case, but with Malick the PLOT is not the objective, it is the TELLING that makes it come alive, a story we're already familiar with. Just one example from that film: the great English gardens in the end with their flawless landscaping, and there is Pocahontas dressed to the nines in her tight fitting shoes, corset, hair done up in a bun, etc. The visual alone is all that needs to be said, especially when Malick places the Native American escort over and against that landscape in his near-native getup, as anachronous and disturbing almost as an elephant defecating at a ladies tea.

I'm supposing that you'll have to put me in the "faithful" lot, because I'm seeing into that structure, possibly a bit easier than the average moviegoer, not out of a sense of "film snobbery" or superiority, but because I've spent over 30 years of consistent film study and analysis, starting with my revelatory film school experience in the late '80s. I drop very easily into the Malick spell, and without reservation am a fan. And I haven't even SEEN this film yet. I'm only responding to this review. I'm very likely to write a follow up to this after I've been able to catch it near my culturally and geographically estranged location. The nearest even this Friday, after a week of it being out, is still a 3 hour drive.

Los Angeles gets the Terrence Malick treatment in Knight Of Cups

Malick has provided, with his gorgeous meander of a seventh feature, plenty of ammunition for the faithful and the not.

AVCLUB.COM

The Martian - Ridley Scott's Pristine World

The Martian

2015 - Ridley Scott

IMAX could be the tell-all issue with me, as my eyes run consistently during a show with the extra goggles on.  People think I'm crying at movies.  Not true, simply dripping from the strain my eyes go through in compensating for the false vision experience.  It's age, or something....too many films, so little time.

I'm going to be rough on this particular film, but make no mistake, I DID enjoy seeing it.  The experience was fun because space and adventure are always a good ride, unless you totally screw it up like "Lost in Space" or something.  Ok wait, I'm feeling apologetic because this is Ridley Scott and I'm about to be critical of a long-time favorite, genius, "must-see" director.  He's in the same list with Scorsese, Kubrick, Eastwood, Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson....you get it.  Ok, he's nothing like Malick, right, but I'm putting him at my own personal same "appreciation" level.

EMOTIONALLY this was a highly effective piece of work, on the level of Apollo 13 in its tension, and at about the same pacing.  Great acting, no doubt on the part of Matt Damon, and some others.  And of course this means great directing, thank you Mr. Scott for another "stellar" job of getting the people right, good reactions, motivations, etc.

Well, there's that.  However, casting needs some help in other departments.  I do understand the need for the NASA lead to be a bit of a mush character, and he needs to be a sort of fall-guy, but it could have been someone else.  I admire Jeff Daniel's screen cool in that he is relaxed, ok, but every time I see him I think Disney.  I'm sorry, it's the truth.  When he's on the cast, there is Disney, and it's a film again.  In other words, he did not help with the supposed realism of the situation, because I don't think of him as the character he's playing, I think of him as an actor.  He's acting.  And that's not what you want in this situation.  However, he was completely offset by Jessica Chastain, and her presence.  Nice. And something of Interstellar was hinted at here, for fans of that film.

Anyway, IMAX could really be an issue in my observation of this film, but I have a feeling it's more an issue of "too well done" as far as the special effects.  It was all so pristine, and crisp, and...well...sterile.  Right, I know there was a great deal of sand, and sweat on the humans, and there was the feces scene and all, mixing up soil and growing potatoes.  Well and good, but even the sand-storm particles were too large and too clean looking, all faky-like.  This was highly "produced" and processed, and for some reason the evenness of the special effects and the cutting edge technology cut off a bit of actual realism for me.  Remember how black and white films would actually conjure for us a dream state of alternate reality and make a world of their own in their atonalism and how removed that was from the world we walk in?  Some of those shots in those older films were done in soft-focus, or with Vaseline on the lens, or not even in very good focus at all .  So when you get effects that are so real, as in The Martian, suddenly they are beyond real, sur-real, and then it can cause us to drop our "suspension of disbelief", and suspect that we're watching a film.  The rotating bolts and nuts in the free-floating hatch scene near the end, well, they were just too clean or something. Hm.

Another element is the story as it unfolds.  I actually don't like to read a new book that a film is based on, if it's a new work.  I'd rather see the film first.  I don't think I'll read this book however.  There was nothing out of keeping in this work with known science, and held true to the 2001 A Space Odyssey tradition of putting the science first ahead of the fiction. Accurate. But the story development was so Hollywood-esque, and unlike Mr. Scott, really.  There was the Jeff Daniels figure with appropriate corporate responses, the typical juggling of priorities at that level of decision making, and as I've said he puts a plastic kind of feel to every scene he's in.  But there was the "secret weapon" figure of the unsung hero from another department which figures it all out. For those of us who know SciFi, that answer was all too obvious, the "turn around and go get him" move.  I did like that character's personal life being so messy, his sleeping in his cubicle.  I did appreciate, like everyone else probably did, the rebellious move by Chastain's character to take a vote and override NASA.

But I also think this work was highly influenced by formulaic insiders and producer interests, and Ridley did not have as much of a hand in it as he would probably like.  I am making a guess here based on nothing except what I already know, but that's my guess.  It does not have the grit and earthiness of Gladiator or Robin Hood.  The terror of Prometheus.  The gnarly unknowedness of the Alien franchise.  It lacked some kind of personality that I can't quite pin down.  And frankly, the film should have ended with Damon's speech to the astronaut class and not gone on with the further footage of the NASA program's future development.  That leads me to my last point.

Together with my previous points, the reason why I think this film feels so corporate, faky, possibly even propagandistic, is that in the end, it was like Space Cheerleading, let's go NASA!  Yeah!  I almost feel like it was funded in part by the space program.  So I guess not leaving with a bit of mystery, or wonder, but instead an upbeat commercially-type of endeavor left me feeling a bit more like Disney than Scott Free.

I went way out of my way to see Blade Runner again at the theater when it was on special run recently in Indianapolis at a Landmark theater.  I will still look forward with great anticipation Ridley's upcoming films, especially what might be a final chapter in the Alien works, but this one did not leave me with a great desire to see it twice, unlike many of his other features which I've seen multiple times over.

Agitatus

The Black Panthers - 2015, Stanley Nelson

The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution 

2015 - Stanley Nelson

I was just on time for the 8PM show in Chicago on the 26th.  The director, Stanley Nelson, was not going to be on hand for tonight's showing, that was the next night.  Two wonderful black ladies came and sat in a couple of the only seats left right next to me. I was one of only a couple of Anglos in the audience. There were moments of recognition, head nodding all around, chuckles and real laughter at many of the comments of the interviewees. This film had a non-stop type of feel, an urgency, and didn't let up.

The movement of the militarization of inner city black youth in 1967 through 1971, emanating from Oakland CA and quickly catching fire on both coasts and most cities, was short-lived, as could have been predicted by all historical markers, and also could not have come to a good end considering the climate of the times, and the methods employed by its leaders.  The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution film succinctly, within its 2 hours, gives an accurate timeline of the development of this movement, stunningly real and telling interviews with actual participants and commentators that were involved with it, and overall the best historical overview to date.  It is biased in its viewpoint, as along with every documentary that claims to be a documentary of course must be, but that bias does not really interfere with itself in the telling.  While it is sympathetic bias, yes, it is also real, and self-effacing, and telling all, despite the obvious pain it brings its maker. While there is a sense that this is black "cheerleading" and playing to the dark audience, it cannot be simply dismissed as sentimental reminiscing. This is good filmmaking. 

In example: The truth of the breakfast program’s good was juxtaposed against words later in the film, “just another breakfast program club”, spoken by the critic Eldridge Cleaver from Algeria, but a well-spoken and inside critic that was making a valid point.  The breaking apart of the Panthers, the split, is revealed in just the same stripe as the coming together.  Well-balanced.

What was most revealing to me in this rendition of the Panther story, and a part that had not stood out to me before, was the motivation of J. Edgar Hoover in creating the Cointelpro and the intelligence to infiltrate the Panthers to destroy them.  That motivation was fear.  The same fear that was behind the plantation owner’s eyes when he saw the slave quarters going up in flames with unshackled black bodies dancing all around it in the night was the same look behind the eyes of the administration in the creation of the program to douse those flames being born in Oakland.  And not without reason.  Black men with guns, in the open, loaded, and even marching into the State house with those same weapons.

But at this critical juncture, there could have been another way, another approach, other than subterfuge, other than the “war-like” tactic of counterintelligence, surveillance, undermining, oppressive police tactics, outright lies and deceiving of the public.  

The Panthers had a righteous cause, and rightly supported, and it was the failure of the administration and others in a position to provide adequate rhetorical and active response, and activation of law to bring about peace, that was the cause of the disruptive actions that ensued in the first place.  However, it must be also noted that the Panthers did not help their own cause in many ways, aligning themselves with the Vietnamese north, the concurrently hated and feared enemy of an ongoing war.  This alignment is what piqued the interest of the national government power more than anything, to believe that an internal organization was possibly providing sanctuary and assistance to a foreign power that was seen as a direct threat and an enemy of the state, and outspokenly communist.  The Panthers adopted the language of communism, Mao’s little red book, and violent communism, “by any means necessary”, and this was in equivalent terms rhetorically and realistically a physically active threat against the constitutional government. That’s why the gloves came off.

IF…and this is a big if that I draw from the subject….if the language of the movement had stayed closer to home and dealt with the most pressing and true problem of domestic violence and oppression of black people by the police, and other authoritative figures of power, and had combined their efforts earlier with WASP sensitivities, and while blandishing weapons also sought a political solution, the whole picture might have looked very different.  It also might have looked differently if concurrently the white-led governmental system would not have resorted to fear and intimidation, and ruinous underhanded spying, the FBI being the weapon of choice.

If if if…….IF Huey had not done drugs….IF MLK had not been assassinated, IF we would only listen….IF….as Rodney King has said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

The Visit - 2015 - Movie - M. Night Shyamalan

The Visit

PG-13   94 Min   Comedy, Horror   
Sept. 11th, 2015 (USA)

So, there may be some reason why this film was released on Sept 11th.  It has a definitive moral: don't let hate drive what you do.

Disappointment can lead to disillusionment.  The teen filmmaker, as documentarian (and please note that documentary filmmakers are primarily concerned with recording reality so that it does not get lost but for exposition of the facts into the future) is throwing around complex film terminology, attempting to be grown past her age, and to create from technology a remembrance of her mother's childhood.  She is exposed to her mother's childhood world, the town, the school, the grandparents......well all seems well anyway.  Is that Martha Stuart in her old age?  The farmhouse seems like mid-century preservation or a museum of nostalgia.

M. Night is at his best when hiding the lurking evil underneath a veil of normalcy.  It's akin to the offscreen horror of Alien, except in this case, the off-screen is actually right on the screen, you just can't see it.

Night has taken some heat of late from many critics, and I for one am a bit more disappointed in his later offerings.  You're only as good as you latest film as they say in Hollywood, however, it does look a bit distant from the man who gave us The 6th Sense, Signs, The Village, and Unbreakable.  That streak of films, along with Lady in the Water, marked a new kind of filmmaker and set M. Night Shyamalan apart from some of his peers.  But there was some juvenility and somewhat of an industry-burdened sigh from the films Devil, The Happening, and this one.  There seems to be some pressure here to use cutesy actors like the teens, and slightly more than convenient plot setups to get to our sit-suspense little treat.  Just as the kids were set into a trap, I the viewer also felt like I was set up for a "boo-gotcha", as when the grandmother suddenly looks into the lens at night.  It's fine to have your kidney-jolting moments like that, but it's also expected to some degree.  Nothing surprised me here except (spoiler spoiler spoiler....sorry not gonna tell).

So this was "fun". It's funny that IMDB listed this as "Comedy, Horror".  Hm, there were some genuinely funny parts, now that I think about it.

Is it worth going out and seeing at the theater?  Well, no, this is a rental I'm afraid.  I'm sorry M!  Sincerely I do love your films, but this is not Shutter Island by Scorsese.  You'll have to take it up a notch to get there.

6 out of 10 stars/points/beans/Depends pads/whatever

Agitatus

Art

So why have I not been writing so many articles as I did in 2013?  What happened to my proliferation of media verbiage?

I've been making my own media:
https://vimeo.com/user4616063

And working on my art:
www.steven-m-curtis.com

Hope you visit my sites.

Best of Enemies film

Best of Enemies2015

R 87 min.
Media Ranch - Motto Pictures - Tremolo Productions

All things 1968 interest me.  It's the year the world split in 2 and we received as it's twin child the birth of 2 cultures, and the answers are still being questioned even now.  In fact, they are working themselves out.... even now, hence my novel that I've been working on for 10 years.  Right, a novel, me.... well, about the film....

Best of Enemies is the recap of the 1968 spectacle that ABC launched in an effort to save its dying influence in the media against the only other 2 players, NBC and CBS who were in bed with the political parties to the teeth, and broadcast a perceived iconoclast of personalities in William F. Buckley Jr. Vs. Gore Vidal.  It was naughty vs. virtuous (you were expecting nice, no, not in this review), basically a new conservative, right wing power vs. the newly empowered left-winged liberal (not libertarian, please don't get those confused) social and political anti-establishment humanism.

The film covers the mood of the period well, with cuts to the surrounding circuses of both National Conventions, in Miami and in Chicago, drawing well on the contrasts in locations, and being honest about the eccentricities of both, capturing the personalities of both parties evenly it seems.  The narration of several key side-commentators of notable interest was spot-on in many cases, such as the observation that the left's characterization of the conservative movement was attempting to draw similarities to that of fascist Nazism in order to demonize it, and create a great wave of negative public opinion against it.  During the debates this is what the "cherry bomb" was referring to, the nasty underpinning that many would not say, but believed.  When it came out in the debates, it was clear that this was the issue that was both a false positive, and yet presciently real, and also.... what made Buckley buckle, and lose his otherwise detached mannerly argumentations.

I felt that here however, is where content was underplayed over the context of that emotional moment, because the film consistently returned to it, time and again, as if it were that moment of defeat for WFB that drove his life ever after, and the issues be damned, that's what he spent the rest of his life dousing the flames of, a sort of dominant defeat that was never recovered.  I disagree.  This is the central focus of the last part of the story that the film portrays that I would have to say ignores the vast evidence to the contrary, that Buckley's life was filled not with vitriol over a single enemy as much as he in fact turned that moment of regret into fuel that powered his ongoing positional rhetoric against the cultural upheaval of idealists into his dying days.  The moment of weakness that seemed to look so ugly for Buckley on the Charlie Rose show sample that was included in the film, and was in fact a moment of personal resignation was paired with the "non-admission" of his regret over that debate moment with Vidal, to make it seem as if that were the driving force of his life, and that the moment of defeat were in fact the "end" of his debate...in effect, he had lost the debate.

This is filmmaking ladies and gentlemen.  The power of the media proves itself once again to be almost indecipherable from the truth, and the power of persuasion still rests with those who wield it, be it ever so benign, or malevolent.  Documentary?  There is no such thing.  The moment you point the camera in any direction, if automatically leaves out at least 2/3 of the whole view.

As much as all things 1968 interest me, and as much as I relate to the content of this film, knowing most of the principle players and parts they have to play, the timeline that I have memorized, from April to Oct (that's from the death of MLK to the raising of the fists at the Olympics), this film did not overwhelm me.  I was delighted at the revelations of the tete a tete between the protagonists, the bantering of the debates themselves, but at the same time was left wanting for more.  It's strange how the film spent so very little time on the actual debates themselves and relied on commentators and narration.  I am particularly biased in this way however, in that if it were me personally, I would have just opened with a few explanatory titles, and then rolled the debates themselves, in entirety.  But of course, out of context, most filmgoers now would not be in the least bit impressed with that, as the knowledge of the 60s wanes, a full 1.3 generations separation between it and the present.

To many of the current generation this film will seem irrelevant, or there may be some separation of the content from the modern context.  A 20-something may regard this film as nostalgic, and completely miss the cultural relevancy of the content of those debates, as passé, as historical, as something to be learned from, but not worried over.  That is, of course, a mistake.  The debates are still raging all around us.  These men are both dead, but the divide they represented still exists as surely as the Mason-Dixon line, and as surely as the Panama Canal, or the poles where one has Polar Bears, and the other has Penguins.  Such debates are still ensuing, and now are in our courts, our schools, and our religious culture, sending one part one way, and one another.  Most recently the debate was resurfaced in the media moment of Ben Stein's "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed", and David Horowitz's book "ProFessors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America".  These were not created in 1968, but in the last 10 years.

I highly recommend this film for those interested in the subject of the 60s, if you're not schooled in it widely, or if this is of some interest to you, but be forewarned, it is not comprehensive, and I believe gives a...well, biased view of the circumstances under which it's "documentary" feel leads us to believe that it is undivided, unmodified, and consummate truth.  For it's length of course, it is attempting to explore an important moment in history and expose for examination 2 important figures of that moment, and you can't cram all of that surrounding history into 87 minutes, let alone 2.5 hours, so this film ends up being targeted to those of us who already know the context, to some degree as to have it make sense. Please read and watch more widely than this narrow 87 minutes allows.

Agitatus

Housekeeping - 1980 - Marilynne Robinson - Novel

Housekeeping 

(novel)1980

Marilynne Robinson

I didn't discover Frederick Buechner or Flannery O'Connor until I was in my 30s, so I guess I should not be surprised by my record that I did not discover Marilynne Robinson until 2 years ago, and even more not shocked that I hadn't read her first novel until just this week.  It was published in 1980.  Where was I exactly?

Incredible.  Here is my favorite line from the book after my first read, as I'm sure I'll read this again, and possibly again after that, for it's densely populated word-smithing I'm sure that I have quite skipped over some gems and did not read it slow enough this time.  But on pg. 179 of the paperback,

"The sorrow is that every soul is put out of house."

There it is.  That's the book in as few words as possible.  And the belief that interlaces every page, like a ghost behind the paragraphs, always there.  The prose is multilayered, but after this read, I've also picked up on Robinson's style.  And that is summed up later in the book within the context of the story actually, when Ruthie talks about "facts", as she exclaims in the narrative voice that, "Facts don't explain things....it's Facts that need an explanation".  

That is, in fact, what Marilynne does.  Her work is character driven, not plot heavy at all.  Yes, there certainly is one, and at times because of the absence of heavy plotting we are absolutely groaning to find out "what happens".  She does allow this, eventually, but there is the weaving in and out of present tense reality to that of peeling back the layers of that reality to reveal divine undergirding, and  concomitantly the barrenness of the human condition.  ..."every soul is put out of house" is the point of reference upon which the entire ship floats, and this holds true for all of her work, especially that of the trilogy Gilead, Home, and Lila, all of those gems that I have read prior to this early work.  Now I see the germination of those novels back this far ago, the seeds of Lila, the son of Boughton drifting,  the images throughout of children bereft of parents or held back from life by forces beyond them.  

Great stuff.  A must read, even if you have taken this long to get around to it as I have.

Agitatus   

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - 2015 - Movie

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 2015

PG-13  105min  Comedy-Drama  June 2015 (USA)

Funny Funny Sad. Mostly funny.  Powerfully realized as a screenplay and film. I took my 19yo daughter to this and we were both surprised, and elated.  At one point she had to calm me down a bit because I got over-giggled at the snippet of the mockery of Urban Cowboy.  That's ok though, there were some other adults in the crowd that were also laughing with me, and I understand why my girl could not get some of the particular points of reference that the film spoof titles were making because I'm sure she hasn't seen all of them.

Acting was not a main point here, it was narration and the follow-through invisibility of the camera, the pacing, and the way that the punchy lines were delivered throughout that made it all work.  Although the acting was excellent in itself, the editing has it in this film.  It's really a piece of magic.  David Trachtenberg is the cutter, and this is one case where it has paid to grab a TV-oriented editor and bring him over to the world of the feature.  Great stuff.  Fast, precise editing makes this story move, where it could have dragged in other hands.  And starting out with the narrator, being the principle player Greg, played by Thomas Mann, giving his voice and character both a calmly even tone was a great decision in the directing department, via Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.  Earl, well, he was so natural, a great foil in the structure, not an Abbot and Costello thing at all, but a very necessary partner and alter-ego to Greg.  The book of course plays on this much more, the relationship being one of kinship across racial lines, planting Greg firmly in the "I'm taking this as it is" department, whose first and foremost mission is to remain anonymous in life, or non-committed and universally ignored.  They played well together, especially when in conflict.

Olivia Cooke plays Rachel, the dying girl.  I would call her role absolutely real, and normal.  A teen girl, ill with cancer.  Her acting responses were so well done, bravo, just the way you would expect a real teen to act and to feel.  There was not a moment where I felt she was acting.  Superb.

This story is huge delight, and if you're a film buff, even more so for the comic insides that weave in between.  I have to post a separate picture here I found of just a "few" of the many titles that the young filmmakers were producing.  Gut funny.  What I want to know is, where is the entire list of their films?  There were so many!

8.5 is the correct number for this film.  IMDB said 8.3.  So what's .2 eh?

-Agitatus

Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Vinterberg - 2015

Far From the Madding Crowd 2015

PG-13  119min  Drama  May 2015 (USA)

A most wonderful escape into Victorian England, and a film you can take your spouse to safely without fearing being hit over the head by some agenda other than romance.  There is tragedy, conflict, and the essence of commitments.  Wonderfully played by all, albeit Tom Sturridge who plays the brazen and bold Sergeant is a bit too brazen and bold at times, and miraculously reappears at the appropriate moment....well, I will not give too much away here, but there were some farther-fetched plot points, yet we are all too eager to receive because of their inevitability.  Yes, it's all too obvious even from the start what is going to happen, but dang it all, that's the fun of the story, watching it unfold exactly as we would have it to be.  HOW it unfolds, the drama, is indeed wonderfully portrayed.  Have I used that word wonderful too many times yet?  There was one thing that happens near the end that was not foreseeable, although my wife says she saw it coming.  Hm.

The most fetching (ha, you thought I'd say wonderful) thing for me, the film guy, was the cinematography.  Quite frankly, that's the main reason I wanted to see it.  I knew it would be beautiful, and it delivers.  Painterly, moving, thick with mist and clarity where appropriate, the lens was polished on this one.   Charlotte Bruus Christensen, the Cinematographer is from Denmark.  Every scene was a thrill.  But there was one special moment, and I am prejudiced because I am a man, and I already love Carrie Mulligan, especially her work in The Great Gatsby aside L. DiCaprio and Inside Llewyn Davis...but the moment was one where the camera catches her seated on a sofa with the window light coming in, and....well, it was Vermeer and...other artists come to mind.  Perfect.  I'm sure that my lovely wife could also have pointed out a few scenes where the handsomeness of the 3 men were portrayed in the same manner.  Striking.

9 out of 10 I think.  Excellent.

In Abstentia, Duay Brothers - 2000

In Abstentia - 2000

B&W film.  Introspective POV in extremis.

This is Eraserhead + Vodka + Acid.

Basically this: A woman in an insane asylum writes to her husband.  There you go.

-Agitatus
07/16/15

I haven't written in a long time.  Somewhat because I've been extremely busy with my art (see www.steven-m-curtis.com - Steven Curtis let me post my art on his website), and somewhat because I haven't had anything that inspired me to write.

Well, I just did, and I have to say SOMEthing about it.  Here it is, plain and simple, literalists and theologians and Muslims are now dismissed:

Noah is a great movie.  One of the best biblical epics to date.   Only the Passion was better.

There, I said it.

The people at Answers in Genesis have it all wrong, completely missed the point, and have no clue what the word "film" means.  I could elucidate, but I'm not going to bother.  It makes me tired just thinking of how to approach that gap in our culture.

Daren is a stinking genius, and he knows what he's about.  Thank you, and looking forward to your next film.

- Stephen Marks